VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

JUNE 6, 2006

The Vanderburgh County Drainage Board met in session this 6^th day of June, 2006 at 5:05 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with President Bill Nix presiding.

President Nix: I would like to call to order the Vanderburgh County Drainage Board, Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 5:05 p.m. Mr. Jeffers?

President Nix: If I can get a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

President Nix: Second. All in favor?

Commissioner Shetler: Aye.

President Nix: Aye.

Bill Jeffers: Good afternoon. Bill Jeffers, Vanderburgh County Surveyor, and your technical advisor to the Vanderburgh County Drainage Board. We have a short agenda today, so, I would like to take the opportunity to say that it didn’t rain as hard in May as it has some years. 1996 comes to mind as the rainiest May on record, but it did, we did have some significant rainstorms that affected people. I had the opportunity to work with Mike Wathen from the County Engineer’s office, he’s your Erosion Control Specialist, and we rode together on several calls that involved both erosion and storm water problems, and I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to work with Mr. Wathen. Every time I do, I learn something new. He has a real keen insight into erosion control and storm water drainage, and that relationship is working out very well. Again, thank you and the County Engineer for the opportunity to work with Mr. Wathen on a regular basis.

Bill Jeffers: The first drainage plan we have on your desk is Centerra Ridge Subdivision. It’s a final plan. Centerra Ridge, as you can see from your photograph on the wall, is located on Telephone Road, in extreme eastern Vanderburgh County, right close to the Warrick County line, south of, well, it’s right out there near your Lynch Road extension that will be opening Thursday. It’s quite a large subdivision that’s being developed by John Elpers and Bruce Biggerstaff. Morley and Associates has designed the plan for them, it’s a final drainage plan. It’s been reviewed by the County Surveyor and found compliant with the drainage ordinance. I’ve worked most recently with John Stoll on a few items near, that I’ve circled in, I believe, orange on the plan, some existing culverts under Telephone Road, and the new ditch that will be the outlet from the main detention basin. John and I worked together with the developer’s engineer on that and came to a resolution of any problems that we foresaw, and you signed the road plans, in that regard, at your Commissioners meeting today. The County Surveyor recommends now approval of the final drainage plan for Centerra Ridge. The Mylar is on your desk to sign, should you approve.

Commissioner Musgrave: Motion to accept the recommendation of the County Surveyor.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Nix: All in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

Bill Jeffers: Knight Township Fire Department has been withdrawn from today’s agenda. They’re contemplating changing the parking lot configuration. It will come back to you in a few weeks for approval.

Bill Jeffers: The next drainage plan we have is the medical office building proposed in Cross Pointe Subdivision to occupy lot C2, lot C4, and a portion of lot E. This is a preliminary plan. I redlined an existing easement that appears on the recorded plat. The developer wishes to vacate that easement, and will be coming to you at a later date with some documents from the attorney to hear, to have a vacation of an easement hearing in front of the County Commissioners, to allow that building to be built across that existing easement. In exchange, he will dedicate a new easement that I have outlined in yellow. Did I give you the right set of plans?

Commissioner Musgrave: We don’t see, we can’t find Cross Pointe.

President Nix: There’s no reference to Cross Pointe on this.

Bill Jeffers: Oh, Cross Pointe Boulevard is to the east. Let’s move our orthograph and you can see it. The two lots that we’re talking about are lots–

Brenda Jeffers: That’s in Cross Pointe 5A.

Bill Jeffers: That’s lot C2 and lot C4. Cross Pointe Boulevard’s over here in 5A and 6.

Commissioner Musgrave: Thank you.

Bill Jeffers: What we’re looking at today as a drainage plan is to the west of Cross Pointe Boulevard.

Brenda Jeffers: That’s 5A. That’s in 5A.

Bill Jeffers: This is a fitness center at the end of Buente West Court. There’s a fitness center existing, and another structure here, and these are two vacant lots. This is, it’s on your plan as, this is C2, this is C4, on the plan. We may have some information from Area Plan Commission that indicates otherwise, but that’s what it is. Then lot E is over here, and they’re simply occupying a small portion of that to get access to Virginia Street for dual access. As I was saying, they want to vacate an existing easement, that’s fine, because they’re going to re-route the drainage through the, a new easement, that I’ve outlined in yellow on your plan, and take all their detention over to this existing lake. They will route it across the street into this existing lake, which is capable of handling it. I just wanted to get this through the process as a preliminary drainage plan, so that the developer’s attorney can come to you, as the County Commissioners, with a request to vacate the easement. It does meet the requirements of a preliminary drainage plan. It will have additional details as a final drainage plan. Mr. Richard Mills is here in the audience, the engineer who designed the plan, should you have any questions. The County Surveyor has reviewed it and found it complies with the drainage code, and recommends approval.

President Nix: Any questions from the Board?

Commissioner Musgrave: Motion to adopt the Surveyor’s recommendation.

Commissioner Shetler: So moved.

President Nix: All in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

Bill Jeffers: Under other business, I have no contracts to bring to you at this time, because I’m reviewing and continuing to negotiate with consultants regarding some technical clauses in the contracts that I’m trying to arrive at a wording that will more benefit the county. As an update to the Green River Road-Morgan Avenue culvert, last week Vectren was placing a new power pole and drilled a hole through that culvert, and we’re going to be working with them to arrange, to repair, hopefully, that will be a temporary repair, if we can work with INDOT to replace that culvert with a larger structure. Indications from the consulting engineers, RQAW and others consulting for INDOT, is that, yes, it’s possible to work a new culvert into the plan. That wasn’t contemplated. It was only contemplated as an intersection widening project. I would continue to encourage you to have your lobbyist lobby the Governor’s office for assistance with funds to enlarge that culvert to reduce the flood plain on the eastern part of Vanderburgh County. I would be happy to work with anyone you assign me to work with in that regard. Do you have any questions on that?

President Nix: I know we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago. Have we made, have you made any contact with anyone other than what you just discussed as far as the project goes?

Bill Jeffers: I’ve made contact with RQAW and another engineering firm that INDOT referred me to.

President Nix: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: No one at INDOT is wanting to respond to this. They are actually in the process of producing the final tracings, and preparing to let it for bid. But, bid letting would probably occur in September to November, and there’s still a window of opportunity we have to work on this culvert. I did contact the consultant with whom the Drainage Board will be entering into a contract for the study of the same ditch, and instructed them to put the large amount of focus and the majority of the focus on sizing that pipe, and sizing the other five culverts between Green River Road and Burkhardt Road, giving us a size that will work according to the study that was published by Morley and Associates, for the Building Commissioner, that indicates that these, a total of these six culverts are undersized for the current discharge of water from that flood way.

President Nix: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: So, those are the contacts I’ve made. I guess, at this point, we really need to go to someone who could influence INDOT into, hopefully, modifying their plan. The response that I’m getting back is, “Yes, it can be done. Who’s going to pay for it?” Because it will cost additional money for RQAW to design the modification. It will cost additional money for it to be reviewed by the other consultant, who I can’t remember the name, but they reviewed the plans for INDOT. It will cost a substantial amount of money to buy the materials and put them in place under the intersection before it’s widened and improved according to the surface plans. You could go with Bridge funds. Hopefully, maybe you could find some Transportation funds.

Commissioner Musgrave: Why don’t we discuss this at greater length and determine what might best be done. I doubt that we would have any action plan in place between now and next week when we would surely meet again and maybe approve any sort of letter or something like that. Do you want to work together?

President Nix: Yeah, why don’t we get together, Bill, in the next day or so. We just need to sit down and talk this out. Because what I don’t want to have happen is, like a lot of projects down in southern Indiana, it just seems like we get the crumbs after everybody else gets the money. I think, this is a really, really important project from the standpoint, and you addressed this in the meeting a few weeks ago, from the standpoint of how close it is to 164, economic development along the 164 corridor. It even works in with the Cross Pointe Boulevard project we’re looking at right now.

Bill Jeffers: This drains your TIF zone.

President Nix: Right.

Bill Jeffers: That’s correct.

President Nix: So, we’ve really, really got to pursue this and get the state on board with this.

Bill Jeffers: I don’t mind crumbs, as long as we get about $500,000 of them.

Commissioner Musgrave: Is that about how much it would cost to do that?

Bill Jeffers: Rough estimate. But, that’s what we estimated Stockwell Road at, and it escalated to a million due to certain complications. I hope we don’t see those same complications. I think this could be an open road cut, rather than a boring, in other words.

Commissioner Musgrave: Is the project that the state’s doing, does that involve federal funds or not?

Bill Jeffers: I would imagine it does, but I’m not positive on that.

Commissioner Musgrave: Okay. I think we probably need to talk to John Stoll too. We did give up the federal fund money that we would have received for the Green River Road project, in order to speed the project up. But, that money is able to be transferred to other projects. I just don’t know if this would qualify for that or not.

Bill Jeffers: The reason I don’t know as much as I should, is that this location is inside the City of Evansville. It’s being coordinated with the City Engineer. However, it does affect a county drain that serves five square miles of county development area.

Commissioner Musgrave: Sounds like a big meeting.

President Nix: So, maybe that might be something we want to do with John and Pat, maybe, together?

Bill Jeffers: Mr. Keepes and others, yes.

President Nix: Okay, let’s see if we can’t set that up, Bill.

Bill Jeffers: Okay. Unless you have other comments or questions about other projects or issues.

Commissioner Musgrave: Motion to adjourn.

Commissioner Shetler: Second.

President Nix: All in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Nix: We are adjourned.

(The meeting was adjourned at 5:18 p.m.)

Those in Attendance:

Bill Nix                                      Cheryl Musgrave                      Tom Shetler, Jr.

Bill Jeffers                                 Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.          Madelyn Grayson

Brenda Jeffers                          Others Unidentified                   Members of Media

VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

Bill Nix, President

Cheryl A.W. Musgrave, Vice President

Tom Shetler, Jr., Member

Recorded and transcribed by Madelyn Grayson.